|
DAILY ALERT
|
Thursday, February 20, 2025 | ||
|
In-Depth Issues:
|
News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
After the Chinese government banned sanctioned oil tankers from entering Shandong port - China's largest terminal for Iranian oil - China's imports of Iranian crude fell by more than half in January. The Biden administration imposed sanctions on dozens of tankers carrying Iranian oil after Iran's missile attack on Israel in October. But the real blow came in response to potential U.S. sanctions under the Trump administration. Data from the French analytics firm Kpler shows that Iran's oil deliveries to China fell below 850,000 barrels per day in January, compared to over 1.8 million barrels per day last October. The Iranian rial has also suffered a sharp devaluation since last October, with the U.S. dollar surging from 600,000 rials to 900,000 rials. (Iran International) Iran executed at least 975 people in 2024, a 17% increase on the 834 executions in 2023, in a "horrifying escalation" of its use of capital punishment, Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and French group Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) said Thursday. "These executions are part of the Islamic Republic's war against its own people to maintain its grip on power," IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said. "Five people were executed on average every single day in the last three months of the year as the threat of war between Iran and Israel escalated." Human rights groups say that Iran is the world's most prolific executioner after China. Crimes punishable by death include vaguely worded charges like "corruption on earth" and "rebellion" which activists say are used against dissidents. In recent years, executions have been carried out by hanging, mostly in prison yards but occasionally in public. There were reports of an additional 39 executions in 2024 that the rights groups had been unable to corroborate through second sources. Already in 2025, Iran has carried out at least 121 executions. (France 24) The Trump administration has stopped all funding to the Palestinian Authority security forces as part of the global freeze on foreign assistance, according to U.S. and Palestinian officials. Washington last stopped direct aid to the authority during Trump's first term but continued to fund training and reform for the security forces. A former Israeli official said the PA security forces were "not affected in any meaningful way" by the freeze and that "other donors have committed to make up the shortfall." (Washington Post) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Everyone in Israel saw the Oct. 7 photo of Shiri Bibas, 32, hugging her two red-haired sons, 9-month-old Kfir and 4-year-old Ariel, as they were surrounded in Kibbutz Nir Oz by Hamas terrorists who were leading them to captivity in Gaza. Their bodies were handed over by Hamas on Thursday. The father, Yarden, was recently released from captivity after 486 days. The body of Oded Lifshiz, 84, from Kibbutz Nir Oz, was also repatriated. Yizhar Lifshitz, Oded's son, told Ynet on Wednesday, "He left alive, was kidnapped alive, and returned dead. The kibbutz was burned, the community was slaughtered, what feelings can there be?" (Ynet News) See also Hamas Turns Handover of Dead Hostages into a Spectacle - Feliz Solomon Hamas displayed coffins that it said held the bodies of four Israeli hostages before a crowd of militants while handing them over to Israel on Thursday, in a spectacle that included taunts and anti-Israel slogans. The coffins were placed on a stage before cheering spectators and cameras that broadcast the scenes on Arab television channels. Israeli broadcasters didn't air the images. The remains of all four hostages will be examined at a forensic lab in Tel Aviv to confirm their identities. In exchange for the bodies, Israel will release a group of Palestinian prisoners. Behind the stage in Khan Yunis, a banner showed Netanyahu likened to a vampire, with blood dripping down his chin. Prime Minister Netanyahu said, "This demonstrates who we are dealing with, that we are dealing with such monsters. We are grieving, we are in pain, but we are also determined to ensure that such a thing never happens again." Amid the crowds were some Palestinians recently released by Israel in the ceasefire deal who were supposed to be exiled from Gaza, including Mohammed Abu Warda, who planned a 1996 bus bombing that killed more than 40 Israelis. (Wall Street Journal) See also Video: Hamas Trades the Bodies of Kidnapped Children to Get Their Own Terrorists Out of Israeli Prisons - Chris Kenny (Sky News-Australia) The PA's announcement that it canceled its policy on salary payments to terrorists was merely a "deception, a cosmetic move, and a facelift designed to gain legitimacy with the U.S. administration," senior Israeli security officials told a Security Cabinet meeting this week. The PA announced on Feb. 10 that Mahmoud Abbas had issued a presidential decree canceling the stipends. The security officials assessed that the PA would now transfer funds to terrorists and their families through alternative means. (Jerusalem Post) "You can't defend communities from the border fence, as we saw on Oct. 7," said Col. Yair Peli in the new security zone inside the border with Syria. Israel is digging a new trench along the border with Syria which will allow it to successfully block even an assault by Toyota pickups and motorcycles like on Oct. 7. The IDF is preparing to remain in Syria for at least a year; to that end, the army is already building bases and outposts there, Peli added. (Ha'aretz) See also Satellite Images Reveal Israel Built Seven Outposts in Syria - Yaniv Kubovich Satellite images reveal that the IDF has established at least seven new outposts, from Syrian Mount Hermon in the northern part of the demilitarized zone to Tel Kudna in the southern section, near the Israel-Syria-Jordan border triangle. (Ha'aretz) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Gaza In our era, the Kingdom of Egypt took over when the British abandoned the Palestine Mandate and ruled Gaza from 1948 to 1967. But the Egyptians never annexed the area and never wanted to. They never viewed it as part of Egypt; Gazans could not become Egyptian citizens or move there. Israel conquered Gaza in the 1967 War, but when it withdrew from Sinai as part of the Camp David accords, it offered to give Gaza back to Egypt. No deal. Gaza was forsaken initially even by the Palestinians. In the original PLO charter of 1964, Article 24 clearly states that "this Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, [or] on the Gaza Strip." The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah always gave Gaza and Gazans low priority. Same with Hamas. As Haviv Rettig Gur has written: "What did Hamas build there?...The GDP per capita in Gaza was higher than Morocco's before October 7. Its potential was always enormous....[The] tunnel system is the biggest thing Palestinians have ever built, and Hamas built nothing else in Gaza in all their years of ruling it." I was serving in the George W. Bush administration in 2003 when Ariel Sharon announced his decision to get out of Gaza. Sharon did not think Israelis had a future in Gaza. The demography was hopeless. In 2005 the withdrawal was completed, and Gaza was left to the Palestinian Authority to govern. The Israelis had built a network of 3,000 greenhouses, which provided 15% of all Israeli agricultural exports. A group of Jewish philanthropists put up the money and bought them. The Gazans would be given a head start on economic development, with the greenhouses as models. When the Israelis left, crowds looted and destroyed the greenhouses within one week. In all the wars of the past two centuries, there has never been a case in which civilians were absolutely forbidden to flee the battlefields. Until Gaza. Trump has wonderfully challenged the Arab view of Gaza as central to the "steadfastness" needed against the Zionist enemy, and he has rightly called it inhuman. In fact, he has jettisoned the view that the most important thing about Gaza is its role in the "two-state solution." But no one is offering visas; apparently refugees from Iraq or Syria are one thing, and Palestinians are another. Unless that changes, Trump's plan will not get off the ground. Trump's plan accepts that development will not happen in the current Gaza situation, where society is permeated by corruption, brutality, hatred, and terror. This is a simple fact about life and is not a reflection of prejudice against Palestinians. Trump recognizes that pouring more money into Gaza from Qatar or UNRWA (or the U.S.) will only reproduce what is there now: more terrorism, more death and destruction, and more misery. Trump is treating Gaza as a physical place and its people as suffering humans, which is more than has ever been done by any Arab League resolution condemning Israel. The writer is Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. (Commentary) The image in Israel of a "Hamas-less Gaza" reflects a yearning, but the reality on the ground is utterly different. Hamas is the most dominant force in Gaza, despite having sustained unprecedented blows. In practice, to achieve this involves taking over all of Gaza, while delivering critical blows to Hamas (on both military and governmental levels), while remaining onsite and attempting to cultivate a local alternative. It will also require the allocation of many resources and forces for the takeover and extended stay, leading to ongoing threats of guerilla warfare, and probably friction with the Arab world and international community. A second option is to examine the initiative being advocated by Egypt for an alternative government in Gaza based on the rule of the Palestinian Authority and unaffiliated representatives. However, in this case Hamas will remain and certainly have an impact behind the scenes on all areas. Such a situation will be far from satisfactory and should be seen as a temporary solution. The basic assumption would have to be that Hamas will forever seek to harm Israel and instill its vision of annihilating it to the greater public, rendering coexistence impossible. Thus, taking over Gaza in its entirety seems inevitable, and will have to be done in the future. The writer is head of the Forum for Palestinian Studies at the Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University. (Ynet News) Recent articles and statements in the Egyptian media criticize Hamas for its October 7, 2023, attack, as well as its claims of victory in its war with Israel. On Feb. 17, Gamal Abu Al-Hassan, a columnist for Al-Masri Al-Yawm, called on Hamas to acknowledge that it has lost the war and brought disaster upon the Palestinians and the region, and that only by relinquishing power will it be able to thwart Trump's plan for Gaza. "Victory parades can't reverse the outcomes of the war." On Feb. 5, Ahmad Abd Al-Wahhab wrote in Akhbar Al-Yawm that rebuilding Gaza will take years and "obliges Hamas to give up its ambition to govern Gaza....The unbearable price of the destruction of buildings, the killing of the thousands of civilians and the imprisonment of hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza results from [Hamas's] reckless decision." On Feb. 12, Al-Sayyed Al-Babili, writing in Al-Gumhouriyya, endorsed the Friday sermon of Salafi preacher Adel Al-Sayyed, who "voiced the belief held by many, that Oct. 7 was not a victory of the resistance, not a success that pushed Israel to accept an arrangement, and not a step forward to correct the path [of the Palestinian cause], but rather a step which set the Palestinian cause back decades." On Feb. 19, Issam Abu Bakr wrote in Al-Wafd, "In the diplomatic and international arena there is no longer any place for movements like Hamas, Hizbullah and the Houthis....Hamas is now rejected in the local, regional and international arenas. Its resurgence as a political force is now almost impossible, no matter how much it tries to spread absurd slogans of victory via the media, which is full of lies - because the Palestinian people understands the reality and is well-aware of its situation. Hamas and Hizbullah rely primarily on Iranian assistance, but Iran is now in a difficult situation [itself] and will not be able to revive the influence of political Islam in the Middle East." (MEMRI) A recently published study by Yale Professor Edieal Pinker found that the New York Times's coverage of the Israel-Hamas war generated "sympathy for the Palestinian people" while at the same time "diminishing Hamas's responsibility for their situation and the continuation of the war." Analyzing 1,561 articles published between Oct. 7, 2023, and June 7, 2024, Pinker found a "dominant narrative" that revolved around the number of Palestinians killed as a result of Israel's military response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack rather than the losses on the Israeli side. "Little mention is made of Israeli casualties post-October 7 or of Palestinian acts of violence post-October 7." While personal stories of Palestinian or Lebanese suffering are generally featured on two out of every three days, "it is common to go a week at a time without a single mention of IDF deaths even when such deaths were frequent." Pinker argued that these imbalances fail "to give readers an understanding of how Israelis are experiencing the war." (Jerusalem Post) Since President Trump announced his plan to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza on Feb. 4, social media platforms have been flooded with posts from Gaza residents expressing their desire to leave. (Israel Hayom) President Trump's Gaza Plan If Trump genuinely expects Arab leaders to help solve the Gaza crisis, he must also pressure Qatar to rein in its powerful propaganda networks and their ongoing alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. These networks, notably Al-Jazeera, have long used the Gaza crisis as a cudgel to hammer other Arab regimes, portraying them as complicit in Israel's "siege" or indifferent to Palestinian suffering. No monarch or president wants to face the wave of condemnation that might stem from a 24/7 news cycle painting them as complicit in the final displacement of Palestinians. If Washington fails to push Doha on the media front, any arrangement for Gaza could collapse under a barrage of Qatari-sponsored propaganda since Qatar effectively controls the narrative. Unless Doha's stranglehold on media coverage and its unholy alliance with Islamist factions is neutralized, the administration's bold ambitions are almost certain to be short-lived. The writer is an Egyptian-American author. (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Israeli Security 68% of Israeli Jews are concerned about an attack by West Bank Palestinians similar to the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, according to a survey conducted for the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs on Feb. 11-13, 2025. The survey found that 67% of Israelis oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state along the '67 lines, including 75% of Israeli Jews and 16% of Israeli Arabs. Some 42% of Israeli Arab respondents support establishing a Palestinian state without conditions (a 10% increase from the previous survey). Opposition to establishing a Palestinian state even if the reward is normalization with Saudi Arabia stands at over 60%. 90% of Israeli Jews and 33% of Israeli Arabs oppose Hamas remaining in Gaza as a civil body. 94% of Israeli Jews and 46% of Israeli Arabs oppose Hamas remaining as a ruling military body in Gaza after the war ends. 66% of Israeli Jews and 25% of Israeli Arabs oppose including the Palestinian Authority as part of a future arrangement in Gaza, while 44% of Israeli Arabs favor the inclusion of the PA. 71% of Israelis support establishing long-term buffer zones along the borders of Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza to help prevent future attacks. The findings reflect widespread security concerns among the Israeli public, especially after October 7. (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Arab Antisemitism The Arab and Islamic world needs to confront the cost to Arab society of its unrelenting pursuit of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hatred. The pursuit of unrelenting hatred of Jews and their only country by Iran, Hamas, the Houthis, and Hizbullah is what led to the attack on Israel on Oct. 7. For more than 100 years, Arab, Turkish, Syrian, and Iranian governments, Islamic militants including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, ISIS, various Shi'ite militias and Iranian proxies, as well as Palestinian Arabs, have waged war against both Israel and the Jewish people. This warfare includes a propaganda war, an academic war, economic and intellectual boycotts, a war using the UN and various so-called humanitarian and aid organizations, and a media war. The Arab world population in 2023 was over 473 million (5.9% of the world population) in 22 nations that make up the Arab League. About twenty million Arabs live abroad. The worldwide Jewish population in 2024 is just 16 million (0.2% of the world population), with 7.6 million Jews in Israel. Why does such a small Jewish population get so much attention? Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hizbullah, al-Qaeda, and ISIS have all portrayed Jews and Israel as the root of all the bad that has befallen the Arab and Islamic world. They have made their hatred of Jews an integral part of their religion, culture, history, and policy. They have squandered billions of dollars and thousands of lives pursuing their lovingly cultivated hatred. So, my questions for my Arab brothers and sisters are simple ones. What is the cost of your hate for Israel and Jews? Are you better off because of all of the war, destruction, and chaos caused by your inability to simply say that you will live in peace and accept as a neighbor the indigenous Jews living in the Land of Israel? The writer is former executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. (Times of Israel) Weekend Features Though we knew that the terrorists were baby killers who had slaughtered and tortured countless children on Oct. 7, we were not emotionally prepared for the shock we felt at hearing of the murders of Shiri, Ariel, and baby Kfir Bibas. By murdering these hostages in cold blood, the enemy has confirmed what we already knew on the first day of the war - it is either them, or us. The Hamas terrorists crave death - first and foremost ours - and, almost gleefully, they will sacrifice their own lives and certainly those of their fellow Palestinians in order to destroy us all - mother and child together. We have learned in the hardest way possible that Hamas cannot be babied, bought off, and bargained with. The Bibas killing forces us to confront an essential, existential question: Do we have what it takes to survive in the brutal, show-no-mercy Middle East?< How can we avenge the slaying of the Bibas family members and honor their memory? We must rise up in righteous fury. We have to gather up our courage and dedicate ourselves to eradicating the evil called Hamas, no matter how long it takes. Surrender is not an option. We must win this battle for our survival. The writer directs the Jewish Outreach Center in Ra'anana, Israel. His son, Sgt. Ari Weiss, was killed in September 2002 during a raid on Hamas headquarters in Nablus. (Jerusalem Post) Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis), a retired Navy SEAL, told the Jerusalem Post in an interview on Wednesday that after the Oct. 7 massacre he immediately came to Israel. "When I retired [from the Navy], I made a personal oath between me and God that if something like October 7 happened, I would help the Jewish people," a commitment, rooted in his deep Christian faith. "I didn't tell anyone about this oath, not even my wife. But when I finally did, she looked at me and said, 'Then why are you still here?'" During his visit he donated blood at an Israeli hospital. "Israel is fighting America's war right now. Every Hamas terrorist that the IDF kills is one less terrorist that could kill Americans. It's that simple." Van Orden's message to Israelis is: "You are not alone. There are Americans who stand with you from beginning to end so that 'from the river to the sea' never happens." (Jerusalem Post) A trip to post-Oct. 7 Canada in February introduced me to a world I did not recognize. "Being Jewish today means living behind security," one of my hosts observed. Students told insane tales of math or physics professors sacrificing class time to bash Israel, of writing teachers imposing class assignments about how "Israelis are savages," of historians claiming that Jewish women made up stories about Palestinians raping them on Oct. 7. I heard of students in elementary schools enduring Nazi jokes and of fifth-grade teachers bullying Jewish kids while trashing Israel. A rapidly growing, rabid, pro-Palestinian movement of Muslims in Canada has been raised to despise Jews, not "just" Israelis, and import thuggish mob politics into Western democracies. Canada's weakening national identity and many Canadians' polite passivity tolerates the intolerable, even as their Jewish neighbors suffer. However, all is not lost. At the University of Ottawa, when anti-Zionist goons tried banning me from campus, top administrators, including President Jacques Fremont - a human rights expert - appeared, so the masked cowards didn't. Most importantly, I met wonderful students. They love Israel, Zionism, the Jewish people and Western values. They laugh off many of their fellow students' excesses. They refuse to be cowed. Many students have landed on the right side of history and are making their stand. The writer, a Distinguished Scholar of North American History at McGill University, is a Senior Fellow in Zionist Thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute. (Jerusalem Post) Observations: Few Innocent Civilians in Gaza - Nadav Shragai (Israel Hayom)
Support Daily Alert Daily Alert is the work of a team of expert analysts who find the most important and timely articles from around the world on Israel, the Middle East and U.S. policy. No wonder it is read by heads of government, leading journalists, and thousands of people who want to stay on top of the news. To continue to provide this service, Daily Alert requires your support. Please take a moment to click here and make your contribution through the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. |
||